Monday: Hili dialogue

February 23, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the last Monday of the month: it’s Monday, February 23, 2026. In a week it will be March, the Month of Ducks Arrival. It’s also National Tootsie Roll Day, the candy that looks like dung. Here’s a mini:

By Evan-Amos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,

Here’s an ad for the candy in 1918, when the boys, who fought for America, return and get their rewards:

Self-scanned, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The candy was invented by an Austrian Jewish immigrant. From Wikipedia:

The first candy that Hirschfield created was Bromangelon Jelly Powder. He completed the invention of Tootsie Rolls in 1907 after patenting a technique to give them their unique texture. He named the candy after his daughter Clara, whose nickname was “Tootsie.”  The first Tootsie Rolls were marketed commercially in September 1908. Hirschfeld became vice-president of the company, which changed its name to Sweets Company of America in 1917, around the time of the retirement of founders Stern and Saalberg. Hirschfield resigned or was fired in 1920 and subsequently started Mells Candy. On January 13, 1922, in his room at the Monterey Hotel in Manhattan, he shot and killed himself, leaving a note saying that he was “sorry, but could not help it.”

I don’t like them. Bromagelon was the first commercial dessert made of gelatin, preceding Jello-O by several years but driven out of business by it.

It’s also Curling is Cool Day, International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day, National Banana Bread Day (good with cream cheese), and National Rationalization Day (see a later post today).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

First, the U.S. men’s ice hockey team won Olympic gold by defeating Canada in overtime by a score of 2-1. One player got his front tooth knocked out, and kept playing as blood dribbled on the ice.

But all told, another miracle on ice!  Here is a video of the highlights (watch the first goal: it’s amazing):

*As predicted, Trump isn’t going to accept the Supreme Court’s erasure of most of his tariffs. He is, instead, raising global tariffs to 15%.

President Trump said on Saturday that he would raise his new, global tariff to 15 percent, a day after he took steps to replicate some of the punishing duties that had been struck down by the Supreme Court.

Mr. Trump announced the sudden change in a post on social media, and said the policy would take effect immediately, as he signaled that he would press ahead with his aggressive trade strategy despite suffering a major legal setback.

For some countries, such as Britain and Australia, Mr. Trump’s new 15 percent tariff will actually be higher than the rates that previously applied to their exports to the United States. For others, like China, Vietnam, India and Brazil, the new rate will be significantly lower. The previous set of duties were invalidated on Friday, after a majority of the court’s justices found that the president did not have the authority to issue them.

Mr. Trump had initially set his replacement global rate at 10 percent, using a provision in a law — never before invoked by a president — that allows him to impose an across-the-board tariff for 150 days unless Congress agrees to extend it. In the directive, he indicated it would take effect after midnight on February 24.

The statute caps the rate at 15 percent, limiting the president’s ability to lift it again, though Mr. Trump has signaled he plans to use other trade powers in the coming months to add further taxes on imports.

Here are the old a new tariff rates now from the NYT (click to enlarge):

(from the NYT): Notes: Rates shown are a comparison between the emergency tariffs invalidated by the Supreme Court and the president’s new 15 percent baseline. For Canada and Mexico, the tariffs do not apply to goods subject to a trade deal with the United States. Other tariffs, like sectoral Section 232 tariff and China-specific Section 302 tariffs, are not shown here. The new global tariff does not apply to all goods; some are exempt, and others are subject to certain other duties.

Look, all tariffs are BAD. Period.  But Trump uses his usual caps when he touts his new decision, which may not stand up to court rulings:

“I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been “ripping” the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

“During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again — GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!” he continued.

*The Washington Post reports that the Secret Service shot and killed an armed man who entered the secure perimeter of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

U.S. Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a man who entered the secure perimeter of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate early Sunday morning, the Secret Service said in a statement.

Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago this weekend.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters Sunday morning that the individual, identified as 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin of Cameron, North Carolina, was carrying a gas canister and a shotgun. Bradshaw confirmed the identification of Martin after initially withholding it until officials could notify his family.

According to Bradshaw, the officers confrontedMartin, who was White, around 1:30 a.m. and orderedhim to put down the gas canister and the gun. He put down the canister and “raised the shotgun to a shooting position,” Bradshaw said.

“At that point in time, the deputy and the two Secret Service agents fired their weapons” and shot and killed the man, who died at the scene, Bradshaw said.

Bradshaw said the incident happened “just inside the inner perimeter” of Mar-a-Lago, near the estate’s north gate.

What is this–the third attempt on his life? You’d think that an assassin would at least check to see that the President was at home before trying to kill him.  I’m sure there are people saying, “Damn, they failed again!”, but, much as I detest Trump and his actions, I will not say I want him killed. Hard as it is to believe, I’m sure there are people who love him, and Trump surely loves himself.  Besides, do you think Vance would be an improvement? I favor waiting it out for the end of his term, promoting good Democratic candidates, and hoping Trump continues to scupper his own approval rating.

*Pictures taken from above reveal a lot of American war planes parked at an airbase in Jordan. You know what that means.

New satellite imagery and flight tracking data show a base in central Jordan has become a key hub for the U.S. military’s planning for possible strikes on Iran.

Imagery captured on Friday shows more than 60 attack aircraft parked at the base, known as Muwaffaq Salti, roughly tripling the number of jets that are normally there. And at least 68 cargo planes have landed at the base since Sunday, according to flight tracking data. More fighter jets could be parked under shelters.

The satellite images also show more modern aircraft, including F-35 stealth jets, compared to the aircraft normally seen there. Several drones and helicopters are also seen.

Soldiers also installed new air defenses to protect the base from incoming Iranian missiles.

Jordanian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said that the American planes and equipment are deployed there as part of a defense agreement with the United States.

The changes at the base in Jordan are part of a large U.S. military buildup across the region, which comes amid negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. On Friday, President Trump told reporters he was considering a limited military strike to pressure Iran into a deal.

The Jordanian officials said they hoped negotiations between the United States and Iran lead to an agreement that would prevent war in the region. Over the past month, officials from Jordan — as well as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — praised the talks and said they barred attacks on Iran from their soil.

If Jordan bars attacks on Iran from their soil, where will the U.S. planes take off from if they attack Iran? Also, it doesn’t seem so great for the press to tell Iran where the planes are, allowing Iran to attack them with missiles. But of course the MSM is largely on Iran’s side in all this.

Here’s a tweet with some of the photos:

*Speaking of Iran, the WSJ says that the Islamic Republic isn’t getting a lot of help from its so-called allies.

Iran has sought for years to build closer military ties with China and Russia, but its powerful friends are proving reluctant to step forward as the regime faces the most acute U.S. threat to its survival in decades.

Russia and Iran conducted small-scale joint naval training in the Gulf of Oman this past week, a show of force dwarfed by the U.S. firepower assembled in the region at sea and on land. An exercise involving ships from China, as well as Russia and Iran, is planned to take place soon in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian state media.

Iran has also sought to rebuild its missile stockpile, air defenses and other capabilities with help from both China and Russia, according to analysts, after those elements of its military power were battered in a 12-day war against Israel and the U.S. in June.

But Beijing and Moscow have shown little willingness to provide direct military assistance if President Trump does order an attack on Iran, analysts said.

“They’re not going to sacrifice their own interests for the Iranian regime,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a former Israeli military intelligence official and now a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies. “They are hoping the regime will not be toppled, but they are definitely not going to counter the U.S. militarily.”

For Beijing, aligning too openly with Tehran risks damaging a critical relationship with Trump, who is scheduled to travel to China in March for a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

China is Iran’s biggest oil customer and an important market preventing its heavily sanctioned economy from collapsing. Beijing shares with Tehran a desire to counter U.S. power but fears that aligning too closely with the Islamic Republic could jeopardize its relations in the Persian Gulf region, according to analysts.

For Moscow, the calculation is similar but even more urgent: Not alienating Trump and driving him close to Ukraine takes precedence over helping Tehran.

It’s not clear whether our expensive positioning of ships and planes in the Middle East is preparatory to an attack, or is a giant bluff to get Iran to give up its nuclear program, but once again I repeat that they never will, and if they say they will they are lying.  Perhaps a Big Bluff could work to do that, but I doubt it.

*Oy! The skeleton of St. Francis of Assisi is going on display in the town for which he’s named. There are photos at the Guardian site as well as in this tweet from Matthew:

We have come such a long way since the Bronze Age veneration of the dead.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-02-22T11:11:19.897Z

From the Guardian:

Saint Francis of Assisi’s skeleton is going on full public display from Sunday for the first time, in a move that is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Inside a nitrogen-filled case with the Latin inscription “Corpus Sancti Francisci” (the body of Saint Francis), the remains are being shown in the Italian hillside town’s Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi.

St Francis, who died on 3 October 1226, founded the Franciscan order after renouncing his wealth and devoting his life to the poor.

Giulio Cesareo, the director of communications for the Franciscan convent in Assisi, said he hoped the display could be “a meaningful experience” for believers and non-believers alike.

Cesareo, a Franciscan friar, said the “damaged” and “consumed” state of the bones showed that St Francis “gave himself completely” to his life’s work.

His remains, which will be on display until 22 March, were transferred to the basilica built in the saint’s honour in 1230. But it was only in 1818, after excavations carried out in utmost secrecy, that his tomb was rediscovered.

Apart from previous exhumations for inspection and scientific examination, the bones of Saint Francis have only been displayed once, in 1978, to a very limited audience and for only one day.

Usually hidden from view, the transparent case containing the relics since 1978 was brought out on Saturday from the metal coffer in which it is kept inside his stone tomb in the crypt of the basilica. The case is itself inside another bulletproof and anti-burglary glass case.

I’m willing to accept that St. Francis was real—there’s certainly enough evidence for that!—but not that he performed miracles (e.g., preaching to the birds, healing the sick, and getting stigmata), nor that there were later miracles in his name that led to his canonization. And they don’t even mention that he’s the patron saint of animals!

Here’s Jan van Eyck’s painting (ca. 1430) of St. Francis receiving the stigmata (yes, he’s said to have them, but they may have been from disease, and probably not in the right places unless self-inflicted.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is sick to death of winter, just as she always is:

Hili: It’s time for a change in the weather at last.
Andrzej: I feel the same way.

In Polish:

Hili: Najwyższy czas na zmianę pogody.
Ja: Też tak sądzę.

And I found two nice photos from yore. First, Andrzej and Malgorzata taking a break on their front steps with Cyrus and Hili:

And Hili and the late d*g Cyrus, leading us on our daily walk to the Vistula:

*******************

From Ariane, an English lesson:

From This Cat is Guilty:

From Now That’s Wild:

Screenshot

Masih has a video of people protesting the arrest of a teacher for his political views. And the degree of the protests got him freed from jail! Perhaps the Iranians are scared

From Stacy.  The explanation doesn’t make sense, as Israel has far more LGBT people than does Palestine. If Allah hates gays, then Hamas should have won:

From Simon; Greenland helps the U.S., and Trump responds with his usual lack of grace and absence of gratitude:

From Ginger K.:

One from my feed; Science Girl has great tweets:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, amazing videos of blue whales (the largest creature known to have ever lived) eating krill.  They say it took seven years to make this short video:

This is the most incredible footage of blue whales I’ve ever seen

— Steve Mullis (@stevemullis.net) 2026-02-22T08:55:24.356Z

This was a real LOL; I audibly chortled when I saw this:

someone waited their ENTIRE LIFE to write that headline…

— PAL (@paladin42.bsky.social) 2026-02-21T20:26:58.765Z

Bill Maher’s new rule: The King’s speech

February 22, 2026 • 11:30 am

Bill Maher’s latest “Real Time” clip argues that we should get rid of the State of the Union Address (coming up Tuesday), at least under Trump. That’s because to Maher it’s ludicrous that Trump keeps appropriating the powers of Congress for himself, violating our Constitutional separation of powers. The speech has become, says Maher, not a summary of how we’re doing, but a series of future Diktats. Congress seems to have become superfluous: a “supporting actor.” In fact, Jefferson didn’t even favor the President speaking to Congress in this way.

Look at these guests: U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Texas State Representative James Talarico (D-TX). Boebert looks like she’s been spending some time in a tanning bed.

As Maher says, the real state of the Union is “hopelessly divided.”

A muddled argument: Shermer argues for the reality of free will

February 22, 2026 • 10:00 am

Michael Shermer has a new book out called Truth: What it is, How to Find it, and Why it Still Matters, and I’ve mentioned it before. I’m reading it now, and there’s a lot of good stuff in it. But one of the twelve chapters—the one on free will—is, I think, misguided and confusing. In the preceding link you’ll find a video he made about free will, as well as my critique of it. You may not want to read this post if you’ve read the previous one, but the video differs slightly from the article I discuss below.

So here’s my take 2 on Shermer’s views, recently expressed in a longish article in Quillette. (Michael was kind enough to send me a pdf, so I presume he wants my take.) Read it by clicking on the screenshot below, or find it archived for free here.

In short, Shermer is somewhat of a compatibilist—or so I think, for though doesn’t seem to fully on board with libertarian “you-could-have-done-otherwise” free will, but neither does he accept physical determinism.  Further, he doesn’t seem to think that “you could have done otherwise” is even testable, as we’re never in the same situation twice.

He’s right about the untestability criterion. But that doesn’t matter, for even if we were in the identical situation, with every molecule in the universe exactly as it was the first time, there are fundamentally unpredictable events of the quantum kind that might lead to slightly different outcomes. And the more distant in the future we look, the more divergent the outcomes will be. I’ve already noted that the future is probably not completely determined because quantum events could be cumulative.  In evolution, for instance, natural selection depends on the existence of different forms of genes that arise by mutation. If quantum effects on DNA molecules can lead to different mutations, then the raw material of evolution could differ if the tape of life is rewound, and different things could evolve.

Further, if quantum phenomena affect neurons and behavior, it’s possible—barely, possible, I’d say—that in two identical situations you could behave differently. I don’t believe that, and neither does neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, but quantum phenomena that affect molecular movement or positions do not give us free will, as our “will”, whatever that is, doesn’t affect the physical behavior of matter. And so, if we use Anthony Cashmore’s definition of “free will” as given in his 2010 paper in PNAS (the paper that made me a determinist), fundamentally unpredictable quantum effects do not efface free will. Cashmore:

I believe that free will is better defined as a belief that there is a component to biological behavior that is something more than the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature. 

Cashmore takes care of quantum effects by lumping them as the “possible stochastic laws of nature.” (Some physicists think that quantum mechanics is really deterministic though it seems otherwise.)

But Shermer doesn’t talk much about quantum physics—in fact, he doesn’t mention it at all.  He simply argues by assertion, saying that yes, we could have done otherwise, and we could have done so on the rather nebulous bases of “self-organization” and “emergence”.  Let’s take the assertions first. I’ll have to quote at greater length than usual:

Since philosophers love to employ thought experiments to test ideas, here’s one for you to consider (feel free to plug yourself and your spouse or significant other into the situation): John Doe is an exceptionally moral person who is happily married to Jane. The chances of John ever cheating on Jane is close to zero. But the odds are not zero because John is human, so let’s say—for the sake of argument—that John has a one-night stand while on the road and Jane finds out. How does John account for his actions? Does he, pace the standard deterministic explanation for human behaviour (as in Harris’s and Sapolsky’s definitions above), say something like this to Jane?

Honey, my will is simply not of my own making. My thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which I am unaware and over which I exert no conscious control. I do not have the freedom you think I have. I could not have done otherwise because I am nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which I had no control, that brought me to the moment of infidelity…

Could John even finish the thought before the stinging slap of Jane’s hand across his face terminated the rationalisation? If free will is the power to do otherwise, as it is typically defined by philosophers, both John and Jane know that, of course, he could have done otherwise, and she reminds him that should such similar circumstances arise again he damn well better make the right choice… or else.

This is argument against free will by assertion alone.  What his wife is evincing here is her illusion of free will. Nobody denies the fact that we feel that we could make real choices. But that doesn’t mean that we do.

But where’s the evidence that John Doe could have refrained from his one-night stand?  He is correct in thinking that he could have not done otherwise (how could he unless some undefinable, nonphysical “will” affected his libido?), but his wife, subject to the universal illusion that our behavior is more than “the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature”, believes in some undefinable property called “will” that could change the outcomes of a given situation. She thinks that John could have chosen not to fall prey to the allure of that other woman.

So Jane gives John a slap (that slap, too, was determined). And the slap could change John’s future behavior so that he refrains from other affairs, for, like all vertebrates, we learn from experience. That’s the result of evolution. (Keep kicking a friendly dog and see how long it remains friendly!).  He concludes what’s below (bolding is mine): But nobody with any neurons to rub together argues that changing behavior via learning somehow violates determinism.

More from Shermer:

But this is not the universe we live in. In our universe (unlike the one in which thought experiments are run), the Second Law of Thermodynamics and entropy means that time flows forward and no future scenario can ever perfectly match one from the past. As Heraclitus’ idiom informs us, “you can’t step into the same river twice,” because you are different and the river is different. What you did in the past influences what you choose to do next in future circumstances (the technical name for this is “learning”), which are always different from the past. So, while the world is determined, we are active agents in determining our decisions going forward in a self-determined way, in the context of what already happened and what might happen. Our universe is not pre-determined but rather post-determined, and we are part of the causal net of the myriad determining factors to create that post-determined world. Far from self-determinism being a downer, it’s the ultimate upper because it means we can do something about the future, namely, we can change it!

I don’t really understand this paragraph, nor the part in bold. In what sense are we active agents in determining our decisions in the future? Shermer doesn’t tell us, but he seems to be thinking of some nonphysical power of “will” to change the physics that governs our brains and behaviors. In fact, there is redundancy here: we determine our decision because our behavior is self-determined!

Apparently Shermer rejects physical determinism because, given the present, more than one future is possible. The laws of physics are likely to be, at bottom, unpredictable, though their effects on “macro” phenomena are probably minimal, and their effects on the behavior of human and other creatures is unknown. Shermer is even somewhat rude to determinists like Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky (and, implicitly, me, as I’m with them): we are hidebound reductionists plagued by “physics envy” (bolding is mine):

Do determinists really fall into the trap of pure reductionism? They do. Here is the determinist Robert Sapolsky defending his belief that free will does not exist because single neurons don’t have it: “Individual neurons don’t become causeless causes that defy gravity and help generate free will just because they’re interacting with lots of other neurons.” In fact, billions of interacting neurons is exactly where self-determinism arises. But Sapolsky is having none of that: “A lot of people have linked emergence and free will; I will not consider most of them because, to be frank, I can’t understand what they’re suggesting, and to be franker, I don’t think the lack of comprehension is entirely my fault.”

Determinists like Harris and Sapolsky have physics envy. The history of science is littered with the failed pipe dreams of ever-alluring reductionist schemes to explain the inner workings of the mind—schemes increasingly set forth in the ambitious wake of Descartes’ own famous attempt, some four centuries ago, to reduce all mental functioning to the actions of swirling vortices of atoms, supposedly dancing their way to consciousness. Such Cartesian dreams provide a sense of certainty, but they quickly fade in the face of the complexities of biology. We should be exploring consciousness and choice at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organisation.

So what is there to behavior beyond atoms moving around according to physical principles? Shermer doesn’t tell us, but he seems determined (excuse the pun) to convince us that we do have free will, and it seems to be of the libertarian sort! He even evokes the mysteries of consciousness, which many people, including Francis Crick, think is best studied not from a “top down” approach, but from a reductionist “bottom up” approach.  And we know from various experiments and observations that we can affect our notion of “will”, making us seem like we have it when we don’t (people who suddenly confabulate a purpose when they behave according to stimulation of the brain), or making us seem like we lack it when we are actually acting deterministically (e.g., ouija boards). We can take away consciousness with anesthesia, restore it again, or alter it with psychedelic drugs.  All this implies that yes, consciousness and “will” are both phenomena stemming from physics.

Shermer rejects bottom-up approaches, raising the spectres of “self-organization and emergence” as arguments against Cashmore’s form of free will:

This we have through the sciences of complexity, in which we recognise the properties of self-organisation and emergence that arise out of complex adaptive systems, which grow and learn as they change, and they are autocatalytic—containing self-driving feedback loops. For example:

Water is a self-organised emergent property of a particular arrangement of hydrogen and oxygen molecules.

Complex life is a self-organised emergent property of simple life, where simple prokaryote cells self-organised to become more complex eukaryote cells (the little organelles inside cells were once self-contained independent cells).

Consciousness is a self-organised emergent property of billions of neurons firing in patterns in the brain.

Language is a self-organised emergent property of thousands of words spoken in communication between language users.

That list goes on, but it’s muddled. First, what do we mean by “self-organized” properties?  Is water “self organized” beyond behaving in a glass in ways that are consistent with, but not necessarily predictable from, the behavior of a single water molecule?  Ditto for complex life.  In what sense are life and water “self-organized” rather than “organized by physics”? Yes, there are emergent properties, like the Eroica emerging from the pen of Beethoven, himself an admirable collection of organic molecules with the emergent property of writing great music.

Let’s dismiss “self-organization,” which seems like a buzzword that doesn’t advance Shermer’s argument, and concentrate instead on “emergence.”  Yes, water is wet. “Wetness” is a quale evinced in our consciousness, yet the properties of water that make it feel wet are surely consistent with, and result form, the laws of physics, just as the “pressure” of gas in a container is an emergent property of a bunch of gas molecules acting as a group. But nobody says that gas molecules have free will, even though some of their properties are “emergent.”

The issue here is not whether emergence is something predictable from a reductionist analysis, but whether it is something physically consistent with its reductionist constituents. If the laws of physics be true, then that consistency does nothing to efface determinism. Shermer’s failure is that he neglects to tell us the nature of something called a “will” that interposes itself between molecule and behavior.  And often, with greater knowledge of physics we can predict emergent properties from a reductionist analysis. (The gas laws are one such thing.)

I’ll draw this to a close now, adding one more note. Shermer’s failure is twofold. He fails to suggest how an undefined “will” can affect the behavior of matter, and he mistakes determinism for predictability, a rookie error. If quantum mechanics is a good explanation of physics, then the future is not 100% predictable, even if we had perfect knowledge of everything, which of course we don’t. And physicists tell me that quantum effects were important at the Big Bang, so at that moment the future of the entire universe was unpredictable. That says nothing about free will.

Shermer closes with another paragraph that I don’t understand; it sounds in some ways (this may anger him, but I apologize) like Deepak Chopra:

It may seem odd to think of yourself as a past-self, present-self, and future self, but as suggested in this language, your “self” is not fixed from birth, destined to a future over which you have no control. We live not only in space, but in time, and as such no matter the pre-conditioning factors nudging you along a given pathway—your genes, upbringing, culture, luck and contingent history—there is always wiggle room to alter future conditions. The river of time flows ever onward and you are part of its future.

Act accordingly.

This is more argument by assertion alone. I’m not sure what he means by “act accordingly”, much less “wiggle room.”  Of course we can be influenced by what we read, but we don’t have a “will” that could alter what we do at any given moment. As Cashmore said in his article:

Here I argue that the way we use the concept of free will is nonsensical. The beauty of the mind of man has nothing to do with free will or any unique hold that biology has on select laws of physics or chemistry. This beauty lies in the complexity of the chemistry and cell biology of the brain, which enables a select few of us to compose like Mozart and Verdi, and the rest of us to appreciate listening to these compositions. The reality is, not only do we have no more free will than a fly or a bacterium, in actuality we have no more free will than a bowl of sugar.

I don’t mind being like a bowl of sugar, or, rather, a complex piece of animated meat.  I admire Shermer for all he’s done to further skepticism and attack quackery, but I think that on the issue of free will he’s gone awry.

From AI:

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 22, 2026 • 8:15 am

Thanks to kind and diligent readers, I have a few batches left.

Today’s photos come from Ephraim Heller, who sends us today the birds of Little Tobago. Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on the.

Jerry’s pathetic plea for photos activated my guilt neuron, so I composed the following story. It is all true, apart from the moral judgments and anthropomorphism.

About 100 miles off the coast of Venezuela lies the island of Tobago, and just off its coast lies the wildlife sanctuary island of Little Tobago. Once upon a time, there lived on the island peaceful colonies of brown boobies (Sula leucogaster) and red-billed tropicbirds (Phaethon aethereus).

The boobies happily sat on their nests:

The tropicbirds, too, spent their days in domestic bliss on their nests:

Just for the joy of it, the tropicbirds would sail through the air, riding the thermals and admiring their splendid tail feathers:

Whenever they were hungry, the boobies and tropicbirds would roam the seas for many miles around Little Tobago, scooping up small fish. When their eggs hatched, they would fill their crops with fish to carry back to their nests and regurgitate for their chicks.

But one day evil entered Little Tobago’s Eden in the form of the Magnificent Frigatebirds (Fregata magnificens):

Frigatebirds live in the air, feeding and sleeping while aloft. The word frigatebird derives from the French mariners’ name for the bird: La Frégate– a frigate or fast warship. These mean, nasty frigatebirds were indeed warlike, as they were the worst class of birds: kleptoparasites. Because they were named magnificent frigatebirds, they felt themselves entitled to everyone else’s food. In fact, they were so mean that they would even steal food from each other:

While frigatebirds could scoop up their own food or eat carrion, the frigatebirds of Little Tobago attacked the boobies and tropicbirds when they were most vulnerable, as they returned to the island with their crops full of food for their babies. The frigatebirds grabbed the boobies and tropicbirds and shook them and pecked at them until they regurgitated their food in midair. The frigatebirds then swooped down and caught the regurgitated food before it hit the ocean surface.

These Frigatebirds had one weakness: their feathers are not waterproof, so they could not float on the ocean surface because if their feathers became waterlogged they drowned. The boobies often evaded the frigatebirds by diving into the ocean water, where the frigatebirds could not follow.

Sadly, the poor little tropicbirds had no such defense. To add insult to injury, the frigatebirds shook the tropicbirds so hard that many of them lost their beautiful tail feathers, which hurt their feelings as they were rather vain avians:

Will the cute tropicbird chicks go hungry?

Won’t you help us?

Sunday: Hili dialogue

February 22, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sunday, February 22, 2026, Sabbath for non-Jewish cats and National Margarita Day, celebrating everyone’s favorite frozen drink.  In fact, I could drink one now although it’s 5:30 a.m. on Saturday as I begin this post. Note that, according to Wikipedia, the history of this drink is “shrouded in mystery.”

Akke Monasso, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also George Washington’s Birthday, National Cook a Sweet Potato Day, National Wildlife Day, and World Thinking Day.  Here’s a thought exercise that my dad posed to me when I was a kid: “Jerry, think of the face of someone you’ve never seen before.”  I couldn’t do it; it always turned into the face of someone I knew. But AI can do it easily!

There’s a Google Doodle on this last day of the Winter Olympics. Click to see where it goes.

And don’t forget the men’s ice hockey finals; here are the details

Where to watch USA vs. Canada

Date: Sunday, Feb. 22 | Time: 8:10 a.m. ET
Location: Milano Santagiulia Arena — Milan, Italy
TV: NBC
Odds: Canada -125, USA +105

Here’s where to watch it. Most links aren’t available in the U.S. or will cost you $$,but the CBC Gem link might work:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*After the Supreme Court struck down most of Trump’s tariffs two days ago, the Weasel in Chief, as predicted, is finding ways to circumvent the decision. (Article archived here.)

President Trump moved swiftly on Friday to resurrect his punishing tariffs and circumvent a stunning loss at the Supreme Court, ordering a new 10 percent tax on all imports along with other trade actions in a bid to preserve his primary source of economic leverage around the world.

Striking a defiant tone in the face of a legal defeat, Mr. Trump asserted at a news conference that he remained unbowed in a global trade war that has come to define his second term in office. The president even signaled that the tariffs he is now pursuing may yet prove more painful and lasting than those they are meant to replace.

“I can charge much more than I was charging,” Mr. Trump declared as he brandished his remaining trade powers, contending at one point that he could still “destroy foreign countries” by other means.

Mr. Trump said he would revive his tariffs using a series of authorities provided under the 1974 Trade Act. He took his first steps late Friday, invoking a provision of the law known as Section 122 to impose a 10 percent tariff starting on February 24. No president before him had invoked that provision.

Mr. Trump also said he would tap a second set of authorities under Section 301 to open investigations into other countries’ unfair trade practices, which would most likely yield additional tariffs. It was not immediately clear if the administration had commenced that process, or which countries it had targeted.

Together, Mr. Trump tried to frame the twin actions as a close substitute for his newly invalidated emergency duties, many of which he enacted on a historic scale during the highly disruptive rollout billed as “Liberation Day” last spring.

Well, we’ll see if this second “Liberation Day” stands up. The petulance shown in “I can charge much more than I was charging,” is typical Trump.  Remember: TARIFFS ARE BAD FOR AMERICA.  The longer they stay on, the more Americans will pay and the less they’ll approve of Trump. This puts us Democrats between a rock and a hard place. But I don’t want the tariffs on, as we shouldn’t punish consumers just to favor our own party.

And yes, he said he was raising global tariffs to 15%. What a stoat!

*Andrew Sullivan handles a hot potato in his Weekly Dish column: “What the Dems should say on trans rights.”

I had dinner this week with a young gay man who was castrated and had his endocrine system permanently wrecked as a result of “gender-affirming care” for minors. He was super girly as a kid and had an undiagnosed testosterone deficiency which delayed his male development. He liked playing with girls, seemed to act like one, and when he socially transitioned as a teen, he passed easily. Suddenly all the sneers of “faggot” he’d endured as a boy went away. In today’s “gender-affirming care” environment, that was enough.

“Compassion” and “science” took a gay boy, flooded his young male body with estrogen, and removed his genitals — because the docs and the shrinks determined he was too effeminate to be a “real man.” Only when he personally figured this out as an adult and got himself off estrogen and onto testosterone did everything change. He felt energy and mental clarity for the first time. And his life as a man could finally begin — although his body will never be fully repaired.

Readers keep telling me to shut up about this topic (I can hear your groans now). I’m obsessed, you say, and this is a trivial (boring) matter. I’ve lost some good friends who feel very much that way, and my social life has shrunk. But then I meet someone like Mike (a pseudonym) — and I’ve met many others, gay and lesbian — and realize not a single gay group or resource is on his side. In fact, the “LGBTQIA+” lobby all but denies he exists, or dismisses him as transphobic — a dreaded “detransitioner”.

I was thinking about Mike as I read the latest polling — out this week in a liberal online mag, The Argument. The poll shows what we well know: 63 percent of Americans want to protect trans people from discrimination. This isn’t a transphobic country. But, equally, 62 percent oppose transing minors (50 percent strongly), 60 percent support banning transwomen competing against women in sports, and 53 percent want to ban gender ideology in elementary schools. These numbers have gone up the more the debate has raged. The backlash is so intense it has even reversed the public’s previous opposition to bathroom bills.

Now check out the liberal response. Bluesky erupted in fury that the poll was published at all. “Please help us,” one X member tweeted with direct appeals to Tim Cook and McKenzie Scott, who have bankrolled this campaign. Jill Filipovic complained that the “Dems … should have focused on things like ending discrimination in housing and employment,” rather than sports and kids, unaware that the Bostock decision already did that with employment. Most liberals have literally no idea that trans people already have civil rights. Off-message.

In this air-tight ideological bubble, where Bostock is unknown, the Dems flounder. “This isn’t happening” was the first gambit. Good try. Then: “this has all been ginned up by the far right, and Dems did nothing.” Did they miss the Obama and Biden Title IX diktats, Admiral Levine’s removal of lower age limits for transing kids, Biden’s “nonbinary” official Sam Brinton stealing dresses, or other embarrassments like the White House invite to Dylan Mulvaney? Then they say it’s a tiny issue. But it helped Trump massively in 2024. And if it’s tiny, why not compromise? After that, it’s just MLK-envy all the way down, the desire to be the next Rosa Parks. But it’s odd to campaign for “civil rights” when you already have them.

After trying to debate, you come to realize it’s pointless. The woke mind is not really a mind; it’s more like a bunch of synapses. Presented with an actual argument, they snap shut. This is part of what Eric Kaufmann calls the “sacralization” of minorities. For the woke, the “oppressed” are sacred. And in the social justice hierarchy, no minority is as oppressed and thereby as sacred as trans.

The solution:

So what should the Dems do now? Nothing much — because there’s not much left to do but fight the military ban and discrimination in housing and medicine for adults, which are worthy enough goals. What to actually say? How about something like this:

Trans people are under attack today and we need to defend their dignity, equality, and civil rights. We strongly back laws protecting trans people from discrimination in employment, housing, healthcare, and the military. We support health insurance for adult transitions and believe children with acute gender dysphoria should get much more support, much more therapy, and boundless love. We must not leave them behind.

But we also believe medical interventions should be kept for adults, who alone can give meaningful consent. And we believe that, in the few areas where biology really matters — in sports, medicine and intimate spaces — sex trumps gender. That’s just common sense. We can defend women’s rights and trans rights. We are all in this together.

Maybe I’ll lose friends as well (remember that I’ve publicly been called “anti-trans” by the head of my department’s DEI Committee), but I think Sullivan is right overall.  I too am against against “the military ban and discrimination in housing and medicine for adults” against trans people; but that’s not enough to save you from demonization. If you oppose trans-identified men competing in women’s sports or residing in women’s prisons, you’re “anti-trans.”  There’s no discussion with such authoritarians.

*In a NYT op-ed c0nversation with John Guida, Nate Silver assesses the 2028 Democratic Presidential candidates, while on his own site he ranks them in order, though it’s paywalled and I can see only the top three (from the top down, Newsom, Ocasio-Cortez, and Buttigieg. Shoot me now;:  the only one of these three I like is the last! From the NYT

John Guida: You’re a big sports fan, so you know the great drama and symbolic importance of the first overall pick in a draft. Drum roll, please: The first pick was …

Nate Silver: The first pick, made by Galen Druke, was Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. But I would have taken Newsom, too. Either he or Kamala Harris is ahead in basically every poll. And he’s moved well ahead in prediction markets, which, whatever their strengths and weaknesses, are a convenient enough summary of the conventional wisdom.

But it’s important to articulate a distinction here: These are our picks based on who we think is most likely to be chosen by Democratic voters and delegates, not whom we would necessarily pick. Personally, I think Newsom is cut from the same cloth as some past losing Democratic nominees like Harris.

. . . Guida: The second pick also comes from a blue coastal state, New York: ​​Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She was followed by Pete Buttigieg, the former Biden transportation secretary. Maybe we can bring in some broader context here in terms of how you size up the Democratic Party at the moment. You laid out a taxonomy of three factions within the party: Why those three, and how do you see them shaping the invisible primary, if indeed you do?

. . . . Silver: The one thing pretty much all Democrats agree upon after 2024 is that the party needs to change course. And there are three different solutions to that. The left-populists think, well, the party needs to be more populist, especially on economic issues and “affordability,” inspired by Ocasio-Cortez and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York. Then there’s what I call the “abundance libs.” The name is slightly fraught because it comes from the book written by Ezra Klein of The Times and Derek Thompson, and I think the label has come to be used in ways they wouldn’t necessarily endorse. But it’s become the brand associated with people who think the party ought to move to the center, with “smart” economic policies and perhaps following public opinion more on culture war issues.

That leaves the third faction, the “Resistance libs,” which might actually be the majority faction. They usually attribute Democrats’ problems in 2024 to poor messaging or the failure to take on Donald Trump aggressively enough. They want a fighter. And Newsom plays expertly into that.

. . . . Ocasio-Cortez is definitely a populist. And she might have that lane to herself. There are two other highly successful politicians from this group, but they’re Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and not eligible to run for president, and Bernie Sanders, who at 84 is even older than Joe Biden. Ocasio-Cortez’s recent international trip suggests that she wants to broaden her profile, but as inequality worsens, especially at the very top of the scale, as affordability remains a perpetual concern, this is arguably a more valuable message than it has been in a long time.

Guida gives the results of Silver’s scoring, the ones I can’t see on Silver’s site. Here they are:

Guida: Here are the full results of the draft, and then we can continue in categories:

(1) Newsom; (2) Ocasio-Cortez; (3) Buttigieg; (4) Gretchen Whitmer; (5) Ruben Gallego; (6) Josh Shapiro; (7) Wes Moore; (8) Harris; (9) Cory Booker; (10) Raphael Warnock; (11) Jon Ossoff; (12) Mark Kelly; (13) Jon Stewart; (14) J.B. Pritzker; (15) Andy Beshear; (16) Ro Khanna; (17) Amy Klobuchar; (18) Chris Murphy.

Silver avers that moderation rather than “progressivism” is the way forward for Democrats, and “electability” (e.g., success in purple states) may be the best criterion for a Democratic candidate, which would give the nod to people like Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, but they aren’t getting much attention from Democrats. Let’s face, we will hang together or surely we’ll hang seprately, governed by J. D. Vance.

*The Torygraph reports more anti-semitism (as well as sexism and racism), and this time it’s in Oxfam! “Former Oxfam chief claims charity is ‘toxic and anti-Semitic’.” (Article archived here.)

Oxfam’s former chief executive has accused the charity of being toxic and anti-Semitic during her tenure.

Halima Begum resigned as the chief executive of Oxfam GB in December amid allegations that she was bullying staff.

Now she has accused the charity of having a disproportionate focus on Gaza compared with other world crises, and said it was too quick to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

Ms Begum, who is taking Oxfam to an employment tribunal over her departure, also accused the charity of racism and sexism from “board members” at “two board meetings”.

In her tribunal claim, she accuses the organisation of having a “toxic anti-Semitic culture”.

Ms Begum, who was appointed in 2024, told Channel 4 News: “It’s important to work around the rule of law and maintain that the international rule of law must not be compromised. But we have to show consistency with other crises in the world, and it always felt as though we were disproportionately working around the crisis in Gaza.”

Referring to Gaza, she added: “But other examples include quite strong pushback when we were not ready yet to use the word ‘genocide’.

“To use the word ‘genocide’, it has to be something we arrive at with consultation and evidence and good legal advice and to try and use that term before we are ready as an organisation feels quite risky to me.”

The charity adopted the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza in summer 2025 and accused the Israeli government of routinely blocking aid.

Ms Begum added that even “as a Muslim woman” it was difficult to hold on to “neutrality and impartiality” within the organisation.

She claimed that during the charity’s restructure, in which large numbers of UK staff were made redundant, a member of the senior team called the all-female leadership team a “bunch of s–ts.” In December, the charity’s board found Ms Begum’s £130,000-a-year position had become “untenable” after she allegedly created a “climate of fear”.

Oxfam has denied Begum’s claims, though Israel has banned dozens of NGOs, including MSF and Oxfam, from operating in Gaza because they wouldn’t comply with restrictions, including identifying members of their Palestinian staff (there’s a good reason for that given what UNRWA did).

*Finally, here are a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: Bad for business class.”

→ AOC’s big European tour: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez showed up at the Munich Security Conference to debut as a world leader, and it did not go smoothly. She seemed tired (I get it) and stumbled over questions. As a forever Hillary Clinton voter, I’m biased, sure. Hilz would never stutter on a foreign policy question. Taiwan? If China sneezes toward Taiwan, if a tiny fishing boat accidentally turned two degrees left, Hillary would invade Beijing and go back to calling it Peking. It’s America’s world, and you’re Peking again. That’s what my Hillary would say, and she’d make sure the mic was nice and centered when she said it. In Munich, an interviewer asked AOC: “Would and should the U.S. actually commit U.S. troops to defend Taiwan, if China were to move?” AOC responded: “You know, I think that, uh, this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, um, this is of course a very long-standing, um, policy of the United States, uh, and I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.” Perfect. Stuck the landing.

Here’s AOC on Venezuela: “It is not a remark on who [Nicolás] Maduro was as a leader—he canceled elections, he was an anti-democratic leader—that doesn’t mean that we can kidnap a head of state and engage in acts of war just because the nation is below the equator.” But Venezuela is entirely north of the equator?! So it’s kosher now?

Call it a day, kids. It’s Gavin Newsom’s turn. . .

→ News of the Jews: There was an effigy of an “Israeli” at an annual carnival in Andorra, and partygoers strung it up in the air and shot at it. See, it had a Star of David on its face, but it wasn’t antisemitic, just political. This was criticism of a foreign government’s policies, silly, don’t you see that?

The whole scene is straight out of Borat. Who remembers “the running of the Jew”? And the Hamas tunnels are getting a major PR makeover. First, there’s a presentation at City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law: “This anthropologic investigation will examine the history and usage of tunnels in Gaza, focusing on land use and social organization in resistance to colonization.” U.S.-based Dutch artist Robert Roest is finding inspiration in Hamas tunnel glorification: “The light that may appear at some point might be the flashlight of an occupation soldier or a resistance militant, who then ends your life or saves it.” So hopeless, those in the tunnels, just waiting for the righteous flashlight of the resistance militant.

Meanwhile, Matt Lucas, a British Jewish actor/comedian not known for speaking about the conflict, was chased around and videotaped through the London Tube by someone demanding that he Free Palestine. All normal, political speech. Don’t go losing your head!

→ Loud and Clear Voice Woman: Minnesota lieutenant governor Peggy Flanagan is a member of the White Earth Nation, which is a federally recognized Ojibwe tribe, and I need you to know her Native American name. “My Ojibwe name is Gizhiiwewidamoonkwe, which means ‘Speaks in a Loud and Clear Voice Woman’,” she told a podcast a couple weeks ago. A tribal leader was like, your name is going to be loud aggressive woman. He fully means it as an insult, and she fully takes it as a compliment. It’s beautiful. My Ojibwe name means ‘Woman With Woman No Husband Why, Maybe Tits Saggy.’ It’s so meaningful to me.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is doing a military-style inspection of the bedroom:

Hili: I see a hair from Szaron’s fur.
Andrzej: That’s terrible.
Hili: No, it’s proof that he was here too.

In Polish:

Hili: Widzę włos z sierści Szarona.
Ja: To straszne.
Hili: Nie, to dowód, że on tu też był.

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From This Cat is Guilty:

From: Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Stacy:

From Masih, student protests in Iran, a country that the U.S. may well soon attack,

A good catch from Luana: Agustín Fuentes, in his book Sex is a Spectrum, appears to have presented as real data the results of a simulated example. Didn’t he check?

J. K. Rowling tweets condolences to a Harry Potter fan shot in Iran by the government:

I get a mention from The Pinkah, but, more important, he enumerates all the once-liberal organizations that, like PEN America, have been ideologically captured:

One from my feed: origami.  Remember that this involve just a single sheet of paper:

I had to put this up because it’s so amazing. Look how gentle the elephant is with the kitten:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And an optical illusion from Dr. Cobb. Check for yourself with a ruler:

The strongest version of this illusion I’ve seen! Absolute head-wrecker!

— Kevin Mitchell (@wiringthebrain.bsky.social) 2026-02-21T16:36:43.829Z

Best country crossover Songs

February 21, 2026 • 11:30 am

It’s Saturday, a day of posting persiflage, and so I proffer another section of my life of “Coyne’s Best songs.”  Remember, I’m limited to judging what I’ve heard, and here are what I consider to be. . .

The Best Country Crossover Songs

El Paso                                                Marty Robbins
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry            Hank Williams
End of the World                                Skeeter Davis
Crazy                                                  Patsy Cline (written by Willie Nelson)
We’ll Sing in the Sunshine                 Gail Garnett
Stand By Your Man                            Tammy Wynette
Wichita Lineman                                Glenn Campbell
Gentle on My Mind                            Glenn Campbell
Galveston                                            Glenn Campbell
Behind Closed Doors                          Charlie Rich
Ruby (Don’t Take Your Love to Town)         Kenny Rogers & the First Edition
Right Time of the Night                     Jennifer Warnes
I Will Always Love You                      Dolly Parton
Here You Come Again                       Dolly Parton
Send Me Down to Tucson                  Mel Tillis
I Need You                                         LeAnn Rimes
Amy                                                    Pure Prairie League
Snowbird                                            Anne Murray
Sixteen Tons                                       Tennessee Ernie Ford

Now not all these songs were recorded to be “country songs,” but all of them are at least countrified—that is, in the stuyle of country music. And I love all of them. Some are now very obscure (e.g., “Send me Down to Tucson,” “Snowbird”, and of course who remembers “Sixteen Tons,” once hugely popular), but all are great music.  I’ll put a few up for your listening pleasure. You are invited to note your own country crossover songs in the comments:

You’ll notice that there are three songs featuring Glenn Campbell on the list, and “Galveston” is the least popular of the three, but it’s the one that most moves me (all are wonderful).  Campbell, originally a session musician in the famous “Wrecking Crew“, was a world-class guitarist, you’ll see below from his fantastic solo that starts slowly with the melody at 4:27 and then goes off into space.  (For another example of his virtuosity, see the section of “Gentle on My Mind” performed live here). “Galveston” was written by Jimmy Webb and released by Campbell in 2003 after it flopped with Don Ho.

The YouTube notes:

From 2002, Glen Campbell & Steve Wariner perform “Galveston”, introduced by Brad Paisley, with video intro that includes comments by Merle Haggard, Keith Urban, Melissa Etheridge, Toby Keith, Radney
Foster, Tracy Byrd, Robert K. Oermann, and Tom Roland.

The performance starts at 2:32, but don’t miss the introductory interviews.

Oh, hell, I’ll put his “Gentle on My Mind” performance below. How many country stars can you recognize?

The inimitable Dolly Parton (“It takes a lot of money to make me look this cheap”), singing one of her more recent hits, “Here You Come Again“, written by the famous duo  Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and released in 1977.

Another early one from Dolly, written by her and released in 1973. It was her fond farewell to Porter Wagoner, who was her mentor but was also overbearing (they were not romantically involved).  A bit from Wikipedia:

Country music singer-songwriter Dolly Parton wrote the song in 1973 for her one-time partner and mentor Porter Wagoner, from whom she was separating professionally after a seven-year partnership. She recorded it in RCA Studio B in Nashville on June 12, 1973.

Author Curtis W. Ellison stated that the song “speaks about the breakup of a relationship between a man and a woman that does not descend into unremitting domestic turmoil, but instead envisions parting with respect – because of the initiative of the woman”. The country love track is set in a time signature of common time with a tempo of 66 beats per minute. (Larghetto/Adagio)  Although Parton found much success with the song, many people are unaware of its origin; during an interview, Parton’s manager Danny Nozel said that “one thing we found out from American Idol is that most people don’t know that Dolly Parton wrote [the track]”. During an interview on The Bobby Bones Show, Dolly Parton revealed that she wrote her signature song “Jolene” on the same day that she wrote “I Will Always Love You.” Parton clarified later, “I don’t really know if they were written in the same night.”

LeAnn Rimes may still be around, but she doesn’t have a high profile. Released in 2000, “I Need You” (there’s another country song with the same title) may have been the apogee of Rimes’s career, and it’s a great song. Here it is performed live on the Jay Leno Show in 2000. It may be classified as a “pop ballad,” but I’m putting it in the country crossover category become Rimes was a country singer before this came out.

“We’ll Sing in the Sunshine,” recorded by Gale Garnett in 1964, was a hit on both country-music and pop charts. Who remembers this one? It’s very bittersweet, about a woman who tells her man that they’ll have their day in the sun, but it will last only a year.  This is clearly a lip-synch of the original version.

And Skeeter Davis (real name Mary Frances Penick, with a nickname that means “mosquito” in slang) singing “The End of the World” (1962). It’s another lip-synched song, but no less great for it. (Her hair is definitely country here.) She died of breast cancer at 72, performing right up to the end.

Finally, Charlie Rich singing “Behind Closed Doors” (1973), with a theme similar to “Send me Down to Tucson,” but with the latter involving two different women.

I’ve neglected songs by greats like Hank Williams and Patsy Cline, but you can check them out for yourself. Remember that Cline’s big hit “Crazy” (1961) was written by Willie Nelson, who’s still with us.

Caturday felid trifecta: Driverless car kills beloved cat; Nutmeg, the titular mayor of Sellwood, OR; Jonah Goldberg says goodbye to his cat Gracie; and lagniappe

February 21, 2026 • 10:45 am

Today’s Caturday report is a bit sad in that two of the items involve moggies who died. But we all do, and sometimes we need to read about people’s reactions to moggies who have crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

The first piece comes from the NYT, and you can read it by clicking the headline or reading the free version archived here.  This involved a beloved local cat called Kit Kat, who suffered a needless death from a driverless car.

A recent poster from the supervisor’s Instagram post:

An excerpt:

At Delirium, a dive bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, the décor is dark, the drinks are strong, and the emotions are raw. The punk rockers and old-school city natives here look tough, but they are in mourning.

Kit Kat used to bar-hop along the block, slinking into Delirium for company and chin rubs. Everybody knew the bodega cat, affectionately calling him the Mayor of 16th Street. Kit Kat was their “dawg,” the guys hanging out on the corner said.

But shortly before midnight on Oct. 27, the tabby was run over just outside the bar and left for dead. The culprit?

A robot taxi.

Hundreds of animals are killed by human drivers in San Francisco each year. But the death of a single cat, crushed by the back tire of a Waymo self-driving taxi, has infuriated some residents in the Mission who loved Kit Kat — and led to consternation among those who resent how automation has encroached on so many parts of society.

. . .Kit Kat’s death has sparked outrage and debate for the past three weeks in San Francisco. A feline shrine quickly emerged. Tempers flared on social media, with some bemoaning the way robot taxis had taken over the city and others wondering why there hadn’t been the same level of concern over the San Francisco pedestrians and pets killed by human drivers over the years.

You can see a picture of the shrine below, taken from Facebook;

More:

A city supervisor called for state leaders to give residents local control over self-driving taxis. And, this being San Francisco, there are now rival Kit Kat meme coins inspired by the cat’s demise.

. . . . But all of that is noise at Delirium. Kit Kat was loved there. And now he is gone.

“Kit Kat had star quality,” said Lee Ellsworth, wearing a San Francisco 49ers hat and drinking a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

. . .Kit Kat’s death has given new fuel to detractors. They argue that robot taxis steal riders from public transit, eliminate jobs for people, enrich Silicon Valley executives — and are just plain creepy.

Jackie Fielder, a progressive San Francisco supervisor who represents the Mission District, has been among the most vocal critics. She introduced a city resolution after Kit Kat’s death that calls for the state Legislature to let voters decide if driverless cars can operate where they live. (Currently, the state regulates autonomous vehicles in California.)

“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Ms. Fielder said in an interview. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”

. . .Waymo does not dispute that one of its cars killed Kit Kat. The company released a statement saying that when one of its vehicles was picking up passengers, a cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.”

“We send our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and the community who knew and loved him,” Waymo said in a statement.

I think Waymo also made a donation to a cat charity, but that’s not enough. One cat is too much!

What do you think about driverless cars?

The shrine, from Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

A short CNN video showing Kit Kat as well as Jackie Fielder demanding the right of community regulation of self-driving vehicles. I agree!

********************

Willamette Week reports on yet another semi-feral cat who is a mayor (alive this time): Nutmeg, the mayor of a part of Portland called Sellwood, Click to read:

I love how Nutmeg gets carried home every evening!  An excerpt:

It’s not clear what drew Nutmeg to the Sellwood CVS. He’s a 14-year-old cat who, for most of his life, has preferred to spend as much time outside as possible. But in October or November of last year, the long-haired ginger started hanging out in the store’s parking lot. Then he figured out how the store’s automatic doors worked and wandered in.

One clue: CVS does carry some pet supplies, and John Burgon, an Executive Security guard, tells WW that Nutmeg once tore into a bag of cat treats and helped himself. He also once broke into the store’s pharmacy, though it’s unclear whether he was attempting a Drugstore Cowboy-style heist or simply exploring a potential career as a pharmacy technician, as his owner, Joe Moore, suggests.

Moore and his wife, Gabi, adopted Nutmeg a year ago after a friend had to rehome him. The cat was born under a trailer in Boone County, West Virginia, and has spent the bulk of his life in Centralia, Wash., as a mostly outdoor cat. The Moores set him up with a heated dog house in the backyard, put a collar and tag on him (along with an AirTag), and let him continue his wandering ways, though they do bring him in at night.

Store manager Mike Rogers says Nutmeg usually comes in early in the evening and hangs out until the store closes at 10. At that point, Joe Moore comes in—the store is about half a block from the Moores’ house—and carries him home.

. . .customers love him, the Moores love knowing he’s somewhere safe, and staff is delighted to have Nutmeg around, providing him with a fleece blanket and on-the-job snacks. Sometimes, Rogers says, he perches on the counter and quietly demands petting from customers.

“He’s basically become our Norm from Cheers.”

Click below go to the Facebook post:

And a video in an Instagram post; if you can’t see it, click “View this post” link to see Nutmeg in the fur:

 

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A post shared by Willamette Week (@willametteweek)

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From The Dispatch, a man says farewell to a beloved cat (article archived here):

You can see Gracie above. Here’s an excerpt, but you can read the whole elegy at the free link above:

We got Gracie almost 18 years ago from the shelter. Our daughter, then 5, wanted a kitten. We wanted a kitten. But there was a lady volunteer at the shelter who had a tip for us. People throw around the term “cat lady” a lot, but she was the real thing. I remember her sweater seemed to be on backward, and she gave the distinct impression that the shelter cats were just the surplus from the much larger supply at her house. But she was very kind. More importantly, she knew her cats. In movies, and a few TV shows, one of my favorite bit characters is the racing tout. You know, the shoeshine guy or omnipresent loiterer with a toothpick or cigarillo in his mouth and racing form in his hand who seems to know everything about every horse (“His muddah was a mudder”). That was this lady, but for cats.

She took a shine to us and said something like, “Take a look at that one. I see something special.”

She pointed to a thin gray cat, a few months out of little-kittenhood. She was regal but friendly.  Lucy, my daughter, decided she was the one when another family seemed to want her, and Lucy’s jealousy told her we needed to act. We put our names down for her.

But the high-stakes world of cat adoption in the nation’s capital being what it is, we couldn’t just take the yet-to-be-named Gracie home. Because we had a dog, the people at the shelter had to be sure that, Bill Murray’s insinuations about “cats and dogs living together” aside, they would get along. They required an introduction, on the premises. So, we made an appointment and came back a few days later with Cosmo the Wonderdog. We waited in a canine-feline interaction room. They brought in Gracie. Gracie saw Cosmo, and her tail inflated tenfold. Imagine one of those shawarma cones at the gyro joint, but made of fluffy gray fur.

. . .Gracie was the friendliest cat I’ve ever known. After a brief interrogation, she would let anybody rub her belly. She insisted upon sitting on every visitor’s lap—or at least trying. Every cat sitter we’ve ever had fell in love with her, because she was so lovable.

But I know a lot of people don’t want to hear a lot of stories about a cat. Talking about your pets can be a bit like describing your dreams: It’s got to be pretty unusual to be interesting at all. And I know from experience that there are a lot of people who will say, “It’s just a cat.”

No, it’s not.

I feel a strange obligation to explain this to people who don’t get it. And there are a lot of them.

When people say, “It’s just a cat,” or “It’s only a dog,” I hear a confession that they have never loved a cat or dog, not really. Such admissions of emotional ignorance clank off my ear and pinch my heart the same way as hearing that someone’s grandmother was “just an old lady.” No, I am not saying that there’s moral equivalence between people and animals. I’m saying that the love people feel for their animals is a real form of love. The people who leap at the opportunity to take offense, or simply argue, at such comparisons miss the point entirely. They want to drag reason into a realm where reason isn’t all that useful and even less welcome. I’m fine if people think loving animals is irrational in the exact same way I’m fine with people saying loving anything or anyone is irrational. I think they’re wrong. I can give you a rational explanation, a just-so story about evolution and whatnot. The materialists will tell you that love is an evolutionary mechanism necessary for ensuring your genes pass on. Okay, fine, maybe, probably, whatever; but who cares? The only relevant fact is that we love. And so do animals.

. . . and the sad farewell. Pay attention to the Jewish expression, one that I love, and is really the only thing you can say as condolence if you don’t believe in God (and many who do believe say it anyway):

This has been a horrible week in a pretty horrible year. My daughter loved her girl more than anything. I love Lucy more than anything. The pain she went through as we ran out of medical options for Gracie and had not only to say goodbye to Gracie but to be the facilitator of her passing and the end of her suffering was indescribable. Lucy’s pain multiplied my sorrow at losing this wonderful creature who served as a center of gravity in my family. They say you’re only as happy as your least happy child. Well, Lucy’s the only child I have, and so her misery is my own. As a dad, I take some solace in the fact that Lucy will learn important things from all of this, but those lessons are learned over time. This has been some terrible quality time, but it will improve as it melts into quantity time.

One of the best expressions the Jews have given the world is “May their memory be a blessing.” Having lost so many people, and so many animals, I’ve come to have a deep appreciation for this simple condolence. It’s partly why I unapologetically talk about my parents and brother so often. It honors them and my debts to them. But more than that, it brings joy. It keeps them alive in the only way possible in this life. It demonstrates that even when family members depart, the family endures and carries their indelible imprint. Amid all the crying these last few days, we’ve already started telling stories about Gracie and sharing pictures of her. Because her memory is a blessing, not just because we loved this silly creature, but because our family formed in so many ways around her. And family is a blessing, one of the only real ones in life.

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Lagniappe: A moggyt photobomb

And Nimbus, the Mount Washington Observatory Cat:

h/t: Marion